Crisp
by Jaade
Summary: After Dumbledore's funeral, Remus Lupin and Tonks ponder existence and love. "Tonks was a metaphorical frog, happily hopping down the road, unknowing of what trucks could do to frogs. The thought made Remus feel as if he wasn't allowed to leave footprints."


**Well, I just wanted to write some literary stuff, I suppose.**

**A small R/T piece. **

**Disclaimer: I'd really like to own HP but I don't.**

_**Crisp **_

Love was a word with crinkled, happy edges. It was similar to the twinkle in Albus Dumbledore's eyes, it was like the crispy old Daily Prophets, and it was similar to the barking laugh of the recently deceased Sirius Black. Love was a word with curling, smiling ends similar to Tonks's bubblegum hair. It was a word to be rolled of the mouth easily, except Remus Lupin, adept as he was in pronouncing the thirty six lettered words, could not say it.

It was, probably due to the vast absence of Sirius that he ventured on this mission. Sirius, in life, took up a huge, gigantic presence with his hearty, barking laugh, and his gnashing of plates and forks. In death, Sirius took up even more space, cutting out a hole for himself in the endless fabric of the universe and neatly slotting himself through it, leaving behind a rather deep Sirius-shaped hole in the Universe.

Another thing Remus noticed, as Tonks and McGonagall sniffed next to him, was that Albus Dumbledore was _not_ dead at his funeral. Indeed, his half-moon spectacles glinted over his closed eyes and his skin was papery, crinkly, _dead. _ But he was alive, Remus knew it. Dumbledore was alive, and he was singing in his coffin. Turning a secret, embarrasing cartweel. Popping into his mouth a sly lemon drop. And that's why Remus smiled.

"And we give Albus Dumbledore's body unto the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust…"

As the coffin slowly sunk out of sight, Remus (and only Remus) could hear thumping and screaming and gasps for air as he knew Dumbledore was fighting to get out of that overtly expensive silver coffin. He tried not to scream, not to get up, as the old man suffocated, and Remus praised his lycan sense of hearing. Except, his hearing was about the same as everyone else. So why did he hear Dumbledore screaming to get out of his coffin?

Dumbledore wasn't killed before his funeral. His funeral killed Dumbledore, thought Remus vaguely, as Tonks pulled at his arm.

"Do you want to say last respects?" a tear clung onto her eyelash, and he wanted to wipe it away, that wavering, quavering, silken tear.

"Do you?" he asked her. In retrospect, he knew he must have confirmed confidently, but this was not retrospect.

"Yes."

They had opened the coffin again. Remus almost gasped at the sight of Dumbledore lying prone in his final rest. Five minutes ago, he was turning cartwheels in the coffin, and eating secret lemon drops and now he was dead. _You killed him you bastards, _thought Remus as he watched Tonks crying again. _You killed him with his fucking funeral. _

"I think you should say something." Tonks told him

_I'll miss you sir. Thank you so much for everything. Thank you for believing me, believing in me. Thanks for all the lemon drops. Thanks for my job. Thank you for letting me in onto this wonderful world. Thank you for giving me a chance. _

"I hope he rests in peace." Was all Remus said, authoritan and stern. He walked away, smelling the crisp Funeral Air, similar to old, wrinkled roses on the breeze.

Their room in the Hogs Head had peeling paint, and a creaking bed and a sad, sighing mirror. Tonks stood infront of it, morphing her hair blue, green, yellow and red, as if a child playing with his first ever toy, delighted, excited and wondrous. Her mirth echoed off the walls and bounded its' cheery path into Remus's ears where they curdled and rested.

"Red?" she asked, laughing.

Remus saw Dora as a frog. Not an ugly, toady frog. No, a pretty, loving, innocent frog, hopping down the busy high street, unknowing of what trucks could do to frogs. It made Remus feel hollow inside as he realized he was the truck. The thought made him feel like he had to sweep away his footprints with no broom. No, he felt like he wasn't allowed to leave footprints, because trucks don't leave footprints. And even if they did, nobody looked, because all eyes would be on a squished frog on the road.

Remus gave a hoarse, mad laugh.

When Dora was younger, she couldn't control her morphing too well. She would walk down Hogsmeade, sixteen years old, with bright pink Afros and yellow mohawks. It was about this time she started tripping around over everything.

"She's trying to attract attention…" hissed Pamela Andy.

She was wrong. Tonks was merely trying to _deserve _the attention she had already attracted.

She heard Remus give a slight, insane laugh and she turned.

"Yes?" she raised her eyebrows.

"You see, you're a frog, and I'm the truck and I…" he trailed off, looking into her blazing eyes.

A cold, no, freezing moth settled itself on the insides of Remus's heart. The vorpal moth, it put a foot down with every harsh, snappy word that exited Tonks's mouth.

"What do you even _think _ about this, Remus?" she was experasted, close to tears.

Oh he _thought _a lot of things, mused Remus. It was what he couldn't say.

"Imagine the Earth is a woman. She's forty six years old." Gabbled Remus, putting on a schoolteacher voice.

"What?" Tonks feared for her boyfriend's sanity.

"Yes, and the first microbes formed when she was eleven years old. When she was thirty, the plants started growing."

"Remus…?" Had he become insane?

"And-and only two years ago, the dinosaurs were roaming around, and the entire human civilization began only two hours ago in the life of the Earth woman. And the two of us, with all our hope, our madness, our sadness and our infinite joy, we're merely a twinkle in her eye and…"

"And?"

"And I love you…" he breathed the word not sounding forced. The word sounding like the smile that blossomed on Dora's face, the tears pouring down her cheeks and her hair that was blurring. And she kissed away the tears that suddenly materialised on his face and she couldn't realise that these were not happy tears, instead they were tears for Dumbledore who died in his coffin and who wouldn't twinkle anymore.

"Marry me?" he whispered to her, shining eyes two glittering pieces of wood.

"Yes, yes, a million times YES!"

The cold moth took off from Remus's heart.

**DONE.**

**Well, this was pointless, I supposes.**

**Go check out my other pieces thanks, love!**


End file.
